Revenge Wears Prada (30 page)

“Andy! What would you have liked to be told about in greater detail? That pushing feels like you’re going to split in two? Would that have really helped you get through it yourself?”

“Yes! Maybe then I wouldn’t have thought I was dying. Let’s see, it would’ve been nice to know that it’s normal to be ankle-deep in blood the first time a nurse helps you pee, that they put stitches in places you didn’t even know existed, that breastfeeding feels like having an actual piranha clamp down on your nipple and chew.”

Lily grinned. “And that the epidural, like, hardly ever works on both sides? Or that you’ll seriously wonder—if you’ll ever be able to wear anything but the disposable mesh granny panties you stole from the hospital? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes! Exactly.”

“Uh-huh. Keep dreaming. You would’ve had a nervous breakdown if I told you any of that, and besides, you wouldn’t have had the joy of discovering it yourself.”

“It’s all so wrong,” Andy said, shaking her head.

“It’s how it has to be.”

Andy could still remember her shock—her absolute disbelief—when Dr. Kramer reached between Andy’s legs, retrieved a wailing and blood-covered infant after sixteen hours of labor, and declared, “Baby Girl Harrison looks great!” It had taken dozens of diaper changes and endless pink onesies, blankets, teddy bears, and tutus before the reality had finally settled in. Andy had a daughter. A little girl. A perfect, sweet, incredible baby girl.

As if to punctuate this point, Clementine let out a cry that sounded more like a mew. Andy scooped her up from Lily’s arms and walked her back to the nursery.

“Hi, my love,” she crooned. She gently laid the baby on the changing table and removed her swaddle, her purple onesie, and a soaked diaper. She wiped the baby’s bottom, patted it with A&D, affixed a new diaper, and changed her daughter into a pink-and-gray striped T-shirt with matching leggings and a coordinating striped pink hat. “There you go, sweetie. Doesn’t that feel better?”

Andy scooped her up and, cradling the baby expertly in her arms, walked toward the living room, where Lily was busy gathering her things.

“Don’t go,” Andy said, feeling like she might cry. The unpredictable weeping jags had leveled off recently, but she couldn’t deny the knot in her throat.

“I don’t want to,” Lily said. “I’m going to miss you two so much. I’m meeting my old supervisor all the way uptown, though. I’ve got to leave now or I’m going to be late.”

“When am I going to see you again?” Andy asked, already doing the calculation in her head.

“You’ll have to come visit me when this baby’s born,” Lily said, wrapping a sweater around her shoulders.

The girls hugged and Andy could feel Lily’s hard bump between them. She placed both her hands around it, bent down, and said, “You take it easy on your mama, okay? No somersaults in there.”

“Too late.”

They embraced again and Andy watched as her friend disappeared down the hallway. She wiped away a few tears, assured herself it was just the hormones, and began to pack the diaper bag; if she and Clem didn’t leave immediately, they too would be late.

She walked as fast as her injuries and the stroller would allow as Clem cried.

“We’re almost there, chickie. Can you hold out a little longer?”

The walk to the kiddie play-gym where the weekly new-moms support group met was mercifully short, which was fortunate because Clementine’s cries had increased from a complaint to all-out wailing. The other mothers looked on sympathetically as Andy pulled the baby from her stroller, collapsed with her on the padded floor, and un-self-consciously pulled out her left breast. Although Clem’s eyes were clenched shut and her body was rigid with crying, she found the nipple as if by sonar and clamped on with all her might. Andy breathed a sigh of relief. A quick glance around the room confirmed she wasn’t alone: three other mothers were in various stages of breast-reveal, two more were changing dirty diapers, and three were slumped on the floor, looking alternately dazed and near tears, hunched over their flailing, uncooperative, and unhappy babies. Only one woman appeared showered and appropriately dressed in real, nonmaternity clothes: a baby’s aunt.

The group leader, a curly-haired woman named Lori who claimed “life coach” as her job title, took a seat in the circle of
harried mothers and, after taking a moment to smile somewhat maniacally at each and every baby, greeted the group by reading a quote.

“ ‘Motherhood: all love begins and ends there.’ A beautiful sentiment by Robert Browning, don’t you think? Would anyone like to share their thoughts on that?”

Theo’s mother, a tall, elegant black woman who was tortured trying to decide whether or not to leave her legal career in order to raise him full-time, sighed deeply and said, “He slept six hours straight every single night this week, and then the last two nights he woke up every forty-five minutes, inconsolable. My husband tried to take a few shifts but he’s started falling asleep at work. What’s happening? Why are we going backward?”

Heads bobbed all around. This was how every session began. Hippie-dippy life coach Lori read a beautiful and inspirational quote. Not a single mother in the room even feigned interest, and a couple resorted to outright hostility. Inevitably, one of them asked the question that was burning in her mind, completely and entirely ignoring Lori’s contribution, and the other mothers jumped right on the bandwagon. It was an unchanging, unspoken agreement to reclaim the group as their own, and it made Andy smile every time.

Andy couldn’t help but imagine Emily sitting in on a session. She would stare at them all in pity, no doubt—frazzled, makeupless, covered in spit-up and poop, living without showers and sex and exercise and sleep—as they sat in a semicircle and their life coach read them kumbaya stories. And yet something about the whole scene was an incredible relief to Andy: these women may not have been her closest friends, but at that moment in her life, they understood her in a way no one else did. She couldn’t believe she was capable of bonding so quickly with a group of complete strangers, but Andy secretly loved the group meetings.

“I hear you. We’re in the same boat,” Stacy said, in the process of hooking her nursing tank. Her daughter, Sylvie, an eight-
week-old with more hair than most toddlers, let out a man-sized burp. “I know it’s too early to even think about sleep training, but I’m losing my mind here. She was up from one to three last night, and she was happy about it! Smiling, cooing, grabbing my finger. But the second I put her down, she freaked.”

Bethany, a marketing director for a cosmetics company who, by her own admission, didn’t know her way around a lip gloss, said, “I know how you feel about co-sleeping, Stacy, really I do, but I think in this case you should consider it. I can’t tell you how much easier it is to have Micah right beside us, all night long. You just roll over, pop in a boob, and go back to sleep. Forget all the developmental, bonding crap that surrounds it—I do it out of sheer laziness.”

Stacy tucked Sylvie’s blanket under her arms. “I just feel like I can’t do that to Mark. Already Sylvie takes up ninety-nine point nine percent of my time and energy. Don’t I at least have to pretend I still have a marriage?”

“Marriage? With a two-month-old?” shrieked Melinda, mother to Tucker, who’d just had surgery for some sort of an eye problem. “What, your sex life is so hot you don’t want to jeopardize it by having a baby in your bed?”

Everyone laughed. Andy nodded her agreement: she and Max hadn’t managed sex yet, and she was perfectly fine with that.

Rachel, the newest mother of the group, a petite blonde with blotchy red skin and a long, winding scar on her right hand, leaned forward. “I just had my six-week postpartum exam,” she near-whispered.

“Oh dear. Did they clear you?” Sandrine asked in her faint French accent. Her daughter, a waifish four-month-old with dual citizenship, began to cry.

Rachel nodded. An expression of abject terror crossed her face before she, too, began to sob. “It’s all Ethan can talk about—he’s had a countdown calendar on the fridge for weeks now—and just the thought of it panics me. I’m not ready!” she wailed.

“Of course you’re not ready,” Bethany said. “I couldn’t even
think
about it until three months out. And a friend of mine said it killed until six months.”

“Max comes at me with that look in his eye, and he just doesn’t get it,” Andy offered. “I swear even my OB was horrified by the scene down there at my six-week checkup. How can I let my husband see it?”

“Simple. You don’t,” chimed in Anita, a quiet girl who usually revealed very little.

“My sister, who has three kids of her own, swears it gets better. You recover at least enough to work on conceiving the next one,” Andy added.

“Sounds hot. Something to look forward to,” Rachel said with a smile.

“I’m sorry, but you guys are scaring the hell out of me,” said Sophie, the only nonmom in the room. “All of my friends with kids swear it’s not that bad.”

“They’re lying.”

“Through their teeth.”

“Which they’ll continue to do right up until you have a child of your own and can call them out on it. It’s just how it’s done.”

Sophie swung her thick auburn hair, freshly cut in perfect, face-framing layers, and laughed. She was the only one among them not wearing leggings, an empire-waist dress, or a sweatshirt. Her nails were newly manicured. Her skin looked healthy and tanned. Andy was willing to bet anything that her legs were shaved and her bikini line waxed and that under the snug-fitting V-neck she was wearing a bra made of lace instead of industrial-grade spandex. Probably even a thong. It was almost too much to bear.

Even her charge was beautifully turned out. Baby Lola, all of nine weeks, was dressed in head-to-toe Burberry plaid: smocked dress, tights, headband, and booties. She rarely cried at the meetings, appeared never to spit up, and, according to Auntie Sophie,
was sleeping through the night by seven weeks. Sophie brought Lola each week while Lola’s mother, Sophie’s sister-in-law, clocked in long hours between her pediatric private practice and the peds unit at Mount Sinai. Apparently Lola’s mom thought the new-moms’ support group was really a playgroup of sorts for the little ones—despite the fact that none of them were even old enough to sit up—and had asked Sophie to take Lola in her place. So each and every week, the slim and attractive Sophie with an undoubtedly intact vagina brought an adorably dressed Lola to listen to Andy and her new-mommy friends complain, cry, and beg for advice. The worst part was Andy wanted to hate her, but Sophie was just too damn sweet.

“I don’t know if I can handle hearing about a normal sex life right now,” Rachel said as she hoisted her baby to her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, I don’t have anything resembling a normal sex life,” Sophie said, staring at the floor.

“Why not?” Andy asked. “I thought you lived with your adoring boyfriend. Trouble in paradise?”

At this, Sophie began to cry. Andy couldn’t have been more shocked if the girl had stood up and started to do a striptease.

“Sorry,” she whimpered, looking dainty and sweet even while she cried. “This isn’t the place.”

“Why don’t you tell us what’s happening,” Group Leader Lori said in an irritatingly reassuring voice, clearly happy for the chance to contribute at all. “We’ve all felt free to unburden ourselves. I’m sure I speak on behalf of everyone when I say that this is a safe place, and you should feel welcome here.”

It looked as though Sophie hadn’t heard her, or merely chose, like the rest of them, to ignore Lori, but a moment later, after delicately blowing her nose and giving Lola a kiss, she said, “I’ve been cheating on my boyfriend.”

There were a few seconds of silence in the padded gym room where not even a baby squawked, and Andy tried to hide her shock. From everything Sophie had said, she adored her boyfriend.
According to Sophie, Xander was sweet and solicitous, a sensitive guy who could ask after her feelings but still spend six straight hours on a Sunday watching football. They’d been dating for years and had recently moved in together, which, at least as of a few weeks ago, she thought was going really well. They didn’t talk about it much directly, but she felt it was assumed they would get married and have children, and although she was younger than him by six years, she was starting to feel ready.

“Define
cheating,
” Bethany said, and Andy was relieved someone had broken the silence.

“Well, nothing too crazy,” Sophie said, staring at her hands. “We haven’t, like, slept together or anything.”

“Then you’re not cheating,” Sandrine declared. “You Americans get so hung up on the nuances—on all of it really—but if you love your boyfriend and he loves you, this little fling will pass.”

“I thought so too, but it’s not passing!” Sophie said, her voice almost a wail. “He’s a student in one of my photography classes, so automatically I see him three times a week. It started out with lots of flirting, mostly on his part, although I admit I was flattered. To have someone pay attention like that . . .”

“Does Xander not pay attention?” Rachel asked.

Sophie wrung her hands. “Barely anymore. Ever since we got a place together . . . I don’t know what it is, but I feel like furniture.”

“I can’t tell you how many of us
wish
our husbands looked at us like furniture,” Andy said.

The group laughed and nodded.

Sophie didn’t crack a smile. “Yes, but we don’t have a child together. We’re not married. We’re not even engaged! Don’t you think it’s a little premature to be living like roommates?”

“So what’s happened? Just some flirting? Trust me, Xander’s not racked with guilt every time he shares a laugh with some girl at work and you shouldn’t be either,” Anita said.

“Last night we grabbed dinner after class. With a few other
people too,” Sophie rushed to add. “But then they left and he insisted on walking me home. At first I wouldn’t let him too near because I knew Xander was at home, but we ended up making out on my block. Which is just the craziest thing ever, because Xander could’ve walked right by. My god, what was I thinking?”